China and Hong Kong Entry Rules for International Bachelor Applicants (2026)

Scope

16 mainland universities in the ARWU 2026 top 100 plus 3 in Hong Kong (HKU and CityUHK are in the top 100, CUHK is kept as a reference).

Codebook

data.csv, 95 rows. Unique key: university_id + certificate.

Table 1. Columns of data.csv.

admission_cycle.csv, 19 rows. Unique key: university_id.

Table 2. Columns of admission_cycle.csv.

apostille.csv, 8 rows. Unique key: record_id.

Table 3. Columns of apostille.csv.

visa_by_passport.csv, 14 rows. Unique key: passport + destination.

Table 4. Columns of visa_by_passport.csv.

work_rules.csv, 12 rows. Unique key: region + topic.

Table 5. Columns of work_rules.csv.

language_requirements.csv, 38 rows. Unique key: university_id + track.

Table 6. Columns of language_requirements.csv.

prep_programmes.csv, 24 rows. Unique key: university_id + prep_programme_name.

Table 7. Columns of prep_programmes.csv.

hsk_status.csv, 13 rows. Unique key: topic.

Table 8. Columns of hsk_status.csv.

language_realism_evidence.csv, 11 rows. Unique key: claim.

Table 9. Columns of language_realism_evidence.csv.

sources.csv, 132 rows. Unique key: source_id. One row per distinct URL in the columns whose name ends in source_url: source_id, url, title (publisher and host), source_type, accessed_at (latest date a row citing it was checked), used_for (file, column and number of rows).

Method

Data for 13 mainland and 3 Hong Kong universities were collected between 9 and 23 October 2026 from official pages of the universities (admission and international-office pages, fee tables, catalogues), governments, embassies and visa centres, ranking publishers and, for stable facts only, secondary sources; a second verification pass on 23 October 2026 re-read the rows with gaps. An independent re-check of 69 random rows against the source found 64 matching; the 5 differences were corrected or given a lower confidence before release. The three universities that entered the ARWU top 100 in 2026 (Southeast University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Tianjin University) were collected on 8 November 2026 into the same columns; an independent re-check of 20 random rows of that collection found no difference: 8 matching, 6 matching on a secondary or previous-cycle page (marked partial), 6 whose page could not be opened automatically. A second check of 20 other random rows of the three universities, read in a browser on the same day, found 15 matching, 1 matching in part, 1 whose page is no longer online and 3 differences (Southeast University's 2027 admission brochure had replaced the 2025 language and calendar rules; Tianjin University names A-Level results in its scholarship notice); the 3 were corrected before release.

Every row carries its provenance: source_url (the page where the fact is stated; several pages "; "-separated), source_type (official, law, secondary), checked_at (date read), confidence (verified, partial, estimate) and note. status is found or not_found: a not_found row records what was checked and not found, with the URL tried in source_url and the reason in note; its value columns are empty. Empty means unknown; no value is guessed.

Text added by the second verification pass starts with "Updated 2026-10-23:". Ids follow the other Long Bet datasets (university_id slugs).

data.csv crosses each university with five school-leaving certificates and records whether the admission pages name the certificate, accept "a high school diploma" in general, or add conditions; min_grades is filled only where a minimum is published. admission_cycle.csv gives the latest published calendar (mostly the 2026 intake; 2027 where already out). Visa rows cover seven passports (RU, TR, RS, DE, FR, IT, PL) for the mainland and Hong Kong; fees are those of the visa centre or embassy in the passport country. hsk_status.csv documents the switch from HSK 2.0 to HSK 3.0 (new test standard from 2026-2027) because university thresholds are written in HSK levels whose vocabulary changes.

Known limitations

• Most mainland admission pages do not name foreign school certificates; yes_generic_hs_diploma means the page asks for a high school diploma and does not say how a specific certificate is read.
• Quotas and competition for international applicants are not published, except an English-taught cap at Xi'an Jiaotong University (40 places) and the cap of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC) on non-local students.
• The Serbian visa fee has no currency on the embassy notice; the French centre fee comes from an agency; the Polish reduced fee was read for 2024 only.
• Several admission pages are for the 2025 or 2026 intake because the 2027 guide was not yet published on 23 October 2026 (8 November 2026 for Southeast University, Harbin Institute of Technology and Tianjin University).
• Across all files of this package, 3 of 234 rows are not_found and 2 are estimate.

How to verify

Open the source_url of a row and compare with checked_at. Fees, deadlines, visa fees and scholarship terms change every cycle and are the first values to re-check; rankings change once a year. not_found rows show which page was tried, so a later check can start there. Every URL is listed once in sources.csv.

Cite this
Atamanova, M. (2026). China and Hong Kong Entry Rules for International Bachelor Applicants (2026) [Data set]. https://mariascales.com/research/long-bet/data/china-entry-rules/

License

CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) for this compilation: free to share and adapt with attribution, see Cite this.